Bernie favored me with a brilliant smile, as if she were the queen bestowing an important medal on me. I felt more as though the queen’s horse was kicking me in the stomach.

“What does August say about it?”

“He’s disappeared,” Bernie said. “I think he’s hiding—”

“Bernie, I’m going to call you a volcanic kangaroo, you jump around so much,” Angela warned, her voice rising in exasperation. “The gym manager says August told her he was going away for a week but he didn’t say where, just that it was a confidential project. He’s a contract employee, so he doesn’t get vacation time—he takes unpaid leave if he wants to go.”

“He didn’t tell you?” I asked.

Angela shook her head. “We’re not that close, ma’am. I mean, I like him, but you know how it is when you play college ball—Bernie told me you played basketball for the University of Chicago—you’re training, you’re practicing, you’re fitting in your classes. Girls’ ball isn’t like boys’: we have to graduate, we have to take our courses seriously. Not that I don’t want to—I love everything I’m studying—but there isn’t time left over for family. And August is pretty private anyway. He’s never even invited me to his home.”

“You have his phone number?” I said.

Angela nodded. “He’s not answering it, or texts, or anything. No updates on his Facebook page or Twitter feed.”

“The police must have something to go on,” I objected. “Other than saying that nobody knows where your cousin is.”

“It wasn’t really a break-in.” Angela picked at her cuticles. “Someone with a key opened all the doors, and August is the only person with a key they can’t find.”

“How long has he been out of touch?” I asked, cutting short another harangue by Bernie.

Angela hunched a shoulder. “I can’t even tell you that, ma’am. It wasn’t until today that I knew he was missing, and that’s because the police came to talk to me, to see if I knew where he was.”

I got up to turn on more lights. The only windows in the warehouse where I lease my office are at the top of the fourteen-foot walls. I’ve filled the place with floor and ceiling lamps, and at five on a November day I needed all of them to break the gloom.